These flawed findings, for the most part, stem not from fraud or formal misconduct, but from more mundane misbehavior: miscalculation, poor study
design or self-serving data analysis. "There is an increasing concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast
majority of published research claims," Dr. Ioannidis said. "A new claim about a research finding is more likely to be false than true."

Statistically speaking, science suffers from an excess of significance. Overeager researchers often tinker too much with the statistical variables of
their analysis to coax any meaningful insight from their data sets. "People are messing around with the data to find anything that seems significant,
to show they have found something that is new and unusual," Dr. Ioannidis said.

Every new fact discovered through experiment represents a foothold in the unknown.

In a wilderness of knowledge, it can be difficult to distinguish error from fraud, sloppiness from deception, eagerness from greed or, increasingly,
scientific conviction from partisan passion.

As scientific findings become fodder for political policy wars over matters from stem-cell research to global warming, even trivial errors and
corrections can have larger consequences.

The evidence these guys are putting forward is pretty dire. All Hansen did was produce the computer program the authors used. He made no intellectual
contribution to the actual science, otherwise he would be an actual author.

But I'm sure the right-wing denying blogosphere will be busy spreading this bull for a few days.

So, you'd place equivalency between a group of people who are misrepresenting all kinds of stuff and those actually producing the science?

In this case, the misrepresentation of Hansen producing a computer program as even the slightest bit of evidence of something useful, and also that
the Rasool & Schneider article predicted an ice-age. Hey, we wouldn't want the facts to get in the way of the BS.

Originally posted by Stormdancer777
I thought I would add this, here, because after years of reading scientists theories I find it to be true.

Oh, an effort to poison the well now. I heard Ioannidis' study was becoming a favourite of cranks. He found that 1/3 of some clinical/biomedical
studies were later found to be incorrect, so 2/3's did something useful.

Different researchers use different methods, sometime they get conflicting results, especially in the early stages of research. More research shows
what the hell is actually going on using even better methods. So, of course some research is wrong. It's not a field for the light-hearted. People
will attempt to eviscerate your work. Otherwise, how the hell would we get to a position of reliable knowledge?

NASA's James Hansen, whose work is continually exposed as shoddy while he refuses to share data gathering techniques and computer codes used for such
things with others, has been criticized by a contributing scientist to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as moving
"dangerously away from scientific discourse to advocacy."

What does this mean,exactly?

Certain positive feedback effects, as well as recent data on the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, were not included in the IPCC's report.
"Because of the cumbersome IPCC review process, they exclude recent information," Prof. Hansen says, "so they are very handicapped."

Most definitely passion, not so much pain. I normally find reading these sort of articles funny. The right-wing denial machine is getting desperate
these days.

Was that a question?

Poision the well?

Was that what I was doing?

I think that presenting such stuff is an attempt to 'poison the well'. It's basically an attempt to say 'science is rubbish', when, in fact, it
kicks ass.

Any half-decent scientist know that a fair proportion of research will be incorrect. There are numerous reasons why this is the case. As I said
earlier, at early stages methods are not so good, we find a lot of conflict. So, say two research groups use different methods for the same phenomena.
They find conflicting results. Over time the findings are clarified. One of the groups must be wrong. That's science. Nothing ventured, nothing
gained. This is especially true in complex sciences.

The second reason is the issue of stats in general. When reporting statistical data, we use significance values of 0.05. This means a 5% probablity of
a particular set of results being by chance. Thus, on average for every 100 studies at around p = .05, 5 will be incorrect.

Who gets the grant money and why, and do they, or do they not, fight for it?

And can then, or can they not, be politically motivated?

Heh, funding is hard to come by, especially in the UK. Of course there is competition. You gain funding by doing good reliable work. If a scientist is
producing politically motivated BS, their career will be short-lived.

There is nothing to be gained in the scientific community from allowing your work to be politically motivated. Do you think that Arrhenius was
politically motivated? The science underyling AGW is over a hundred years old.

I would imagine there are SOME, unscrupulus scientists as well.

Without any doubt there will be a few. Only by good science will these dudes be uncovered. It is generally because some cnut produces a certain
result, another group spend 5 years and lots of dosh trying to replicate their data. Then checks are made, and if dishonesty is found, heads roll.

But, again, this is just more spreading of FUD. Spreading doubt about the honesty of researchers, spreading doubt about the validity of science.

Whereas, it takes just 5 minutes of research to show two of the claims in your original source are BS. And you now want to question the integrity of
scientists? Heh. This is normally the way for the denial industry BS.

There is no equivalency. But lots of projection.

As for the following post, Hansen presents his data analysis techniques in his research reports, it will say 'we did x, y, and z'. He doesn't need
to give the programs to other researchers, the idea is that you take the raw data and analyse it yourself using the presented method, that provides a
true replication. Indeed, it appears that the fraudit crew have done so, and have essentially validated the GISS data.

The deniers blogosphere appears to have kept this silent though. Do you think their findings will make the washington post?

The second quote shows that the IPCC doesn't include all the most up to date research. That's because much of it hasn't made press. Essentially,
the process would never stop if they waited for all research. As soon as they decide on the content of a chapter, more research would be emerging.
They might bring that in, that would take another couple of months to get all the stuff the need to do to get it into the report, by then, even more
research is emerging.

Hansen has a track record like many of his contemporaries. He did pronounce that global cooling was coming along with many others. Even the CIA
produced a report back in 1975/76 about the political challenges ahead with this coming ice age.

People now want to believe global warming is happening, as opposed to a natural climate change, and the only way to correct the climate is to kill
modern society. Can't change people's minds nor does a person argue with an idiot, so why try to have a rational discourse over this.

There was a blurb on Drudgereport.com yesterday with this article being part of an opinion piece. The coming ice age is not news to anyone born before
1960 and it's not news now.

Originally posted by hinky
Hansen has a track record like many of his contemporaries. He did pronounce that global cooling was coming along with many others. Even the CIA
produced a report back in 1975/76 about the political challenges ahead with this coming ice age.

Evidence? Should be easy to show that Hansen said such a thing.

The NAS report of that period suggests otherwise. Even the Rasool & Schneider study says nothing about a coming ice-age.

Of course, lost upon Hansen - and, quite frankly, the entire global warming alarmism crowd - is that if oceans were indeed so much higher three
million years ago before man was emitting so much carbon dioxide, it seems quite specious to suggest that man is responsible for today's warming and
sea level rise.

BS.

This is the sort of retarded binary thinking that pervades these guys. Just because past climate changes didn't involve human CO2, that it just
can't be having an impact. How silly.

The second quote shows that the IPCC doesn't include all the most up to date research.

Yes, I have noticed, this is what makes me crazy, the layperson gets this scientific news, but we don't get much of a follow up on the progress of
the theories, so we are left to guess and wonder, i.e. crystal ball,

I love to follow the latest on science, and mostly we just get bits and pieces.

I personally don't agree with Hansen and consider him a catastrophist. I do know that he personally believes very much in AGW.

However, if he once believed we were entering a new ice age, so what?

Just because he was wrong once doesn't mean he's always wrong about everything. That's the thing with scientists: when new data comes to light
that refine or even completely change their theories, hypotheses and beliefs.

Unlike some folk who make up their minds and won't be swayed no matter how wrong they are shown to be.

Originally posted by Stormdancer777
Yes, I have noticed, this is what makes me crazy, the layperson gets this scientific news, but we don't get much of a follow up on the progress of
the theories, so we are left to guess and wonder, i.e. crystal ball,

I love to follow the latest on science, and mostly we just get bits and pieces.

I am not just talking GW here, I mean the whole of science,

Do you see it as sort of cliqueish?

I think more open access to journals would be a good thing, and it appears that things are going this way. You can get some good media reports from
the likes of sciencedaily.com, but the media stuff does tend to be overhyped, and sometimes just plain incorrect.

However, you can read the abstracts of most new journal articles. Just go to sciencemag.com and nature.com and read away, you'll get a short comment
on research, but not the more detailed stuff.

Cliqueish? I think you can find people who are like this. But there is also quite a bit of nastiness and prejudice. Science is great, but it is
undertaken by people, and so has many of the problems normal life has. Some cliqueishness, some competitiveness, some pretentiousness, some
assholishness etc etc.

Well, yes that goes without saying.

So you should understand why they can't include every single article up to the day the stuff is published.

ABE: just thought of a good example for the context of this thread.

Take the hurricane issue at the moment. Only a few years back research started to appear related to the linking of hurricane intensity and sea temps.
There's a couple of groups formed here, one group is producing research showing a link, the other questioning this link.

One of the groups must be wrong. At the moment, I think the evidence is going towards there being a link, but it is still unclear. In time, we will be
much more certain, but at this point there is no great certainty.

But one of them must be wrong. The same happened in the 70s, some people thought aerosols would be the predominate forcing, this would bring cooling;
others thought GHGs would be the main forcing, this would bring warming. If you read the NAS report of that time, they basically say 'who knows, we
need more data for predictions'. Guess which group the evidence supported?

This is the scientific way. Present hypotheses, test them against the evidence. Those which conform to the evidence win the day. Others lose. But
there is no shame, we need this competition of ideas.

Just because he was wrong once doesn't mean he's always wrong about everything. That's the thing with scientists: when new data comes to light that
refine or even completely change their theories, hypotheses and beliefs.

This is exactly what I was thinking, this and the fact mother nature is fickle

It was cooling, now it is warming, in twenty years who can predict?

What if the emission and humans effect on the earths climate are keeping us from the ice age?

What if we bring the emission down and under control and we enter the ice age?

What if the emission and humans effect on the earths climate are keeping us from the ice age?

Good point [y] Hansen may have been right all along - we were entering an ice age, AGW has now reversed that trend.

Actually, I think we may have started the long slow slide into the next ice age about 4,000 years ago ..... although I understand that latest
thinking is that the current interglacial won;t end for another 10,000 years even without human help - this based on new data not available in the
1970s

Originally posted by Stormdancer777
What I see is people getting so radical, if you dare to question.

And healthy skeptism is all part of the procedure.

Of course it is.

But dishonesty and misrepresentation are a common trait found in one group of individuals. They are not what can be called traditional scientific
skeptics. For example, the opening source contained a number of misrepresentations, so did the second one you posted.

They are deniers and cranks. Big difference. It doesn't matter how many times you show them their errors, they continue to spread BS, in which case
they are less than honest, which, as you know, is not a trait that scientists like

All these people need to do is put up. Simple as that. Bring forth evidence. Can't be hard can it? But they seem to prefer to write BS blog articles
and media-crap, misrepresenting science throughout.

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